


And so the Dragon Wakes

by Anam_Writes



Series: princes love dragons; it's just a fact [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Time Skip, Tags Contain Spoilers, Triggers, and he really hates it, claude kisses a sleeping lady, schemes, verdant wind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22444711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: Princes don't kiss slumbering dragons. It is not how those stories go. All the same, Claude must wake her. For country, kin and the sake of all Fódlan....They'd laid her out in white - the village leader's old wedding dress, the nicest thing the people owned, they'd told him - and strewn her bed with wild flowers. They kept them fresh, not a brown spot in sight. He imagined the pilgrims and the villagers must have changed them often, perhaps daily, for the bouquet to be so well kept.Her hair, glowing like jade, was longer than he recalled. It shone enough that he could tell they washed her. It was strewn across the pillow wild but combed through with enough care that not a tangle sat in her green crown.Her chest rose and fell soft as she slept. No different than his own did at night. He felt the urge to strip his glove from his hand, to rest his fingers over the crest of her ribs, to feel her expand and fall with life still left to live. But he did not.Instead he kneeled, quiet and solemn, by her bedside.He brought his lips to the shell of her ear and whispered, "where are you, Byleth?"
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth & Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: princes love dragons; it's just a fact [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610308
Comments: 20
Kudos: 212





	And so the Dragon Wakes

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back if you're back and hello if you're not! Another short for you? Too bad. Not a question!
> 
> Enjoy!

Clovers hung on string from the rafters of the closed little cabin. It filled the room with a smell like fresh air, even as it sat stale in Claude's lungs as soon as he entered. The windows were boarded with rotten, moss eaten planks. Sunlight came through the holes thin as thread. Across the webbings of light he could see the dust and pollen floating in the air. 

"It's not much," the miller's wife said. "But it's the only place we had for her, my Lord." 

He did not doubt that. He was surprised they were even able to find a place. With war and famine and the fall of the villages only benefactors in the Church this much was more than generous. 

He imagined they might have put her in a chapel had the imperials not burned it down. 

"Thank you," Claude said, squinting his eyes to see into the shadows. "That will be all."

The miller's wife bowed. "Yes, my Lord."

Claude waited for the sound of the door closing. When it did he took a step. 

The floorboards creaked beneath him. They felt damp with spring air and old age. Beneath his heel they bent, groaning with threats to give way if he did not walk slow and careful across the room. 

Strings of clover and garlands of lilies hung low enough to brush over his shoulder when he walked, rustling against the fabric of his overcoat.

He breathed deep through his mouth trying to shake the unease the smell of holy flowers always set in his bones. 

The closer he came the easier her silhouette was to see. 

He reminded himself not to swallow down the pain that brought out of him. Not to gulp it down. 

They'd laid her out in white - the village leader's old wedding dress, the nicest thing the people owned, they'd told him - and strewn her bed with wild flowers. They kept them fresh, not a brown spot in sight. He imagined the pilgrims and the villagers must have changed them often, perhaps daily, for the bouquet to be so well kept. 

Her hair, glowing like jade, was longer than he recalled. It shone enough that he could tell they washed her. It was strewn across the pillow wild but combed through with enough care that not a tangle sat in her green crown. 

Her chest rose and fell soft as she slept. No different than his own did at night. He felt the urge to strip his glove from his hand, to rest his fingers over the crest of her ribs, to feel her expand and fall with life still left to live. But he did not. 

Instead he kneeled, quiet and solemn, by her bedside. 

He brought his lips to the shell of her ear and whispered, "where are you, Byleth?"

But nothing came to tell him.

He sighed. 

Eyes down cast, he moved his palms over the floor, hands slithering beneath her bed, until he felt the bone and sinews free to grasp in his hungry hands. 

The Sword of the Creator.

It was what he was here for, in theory. Rumour had spread about Edelgard, about the crest some had seen her use. If his spies were to be believed then the sword must be kept from her. 

"I have what I came for, my friend," Claude said. "What I need."

He lifted the blade up, watching the golding of it's hilt fragment what little light there was in the room. He angled it until the light painted her pale skin, so white as to look sick and ashen. The sun illuminated the rivers of blue that ran blood beneath her flesh so easily, as though it were just a thin veil he could peel back to find her like nature's clockwork beneath.

"But you could open your eyes," his lips pulled back in a smile he'd practiced in the mirror. The one he'd used when he'd taken her attention from Edelgard and Dimitri so many years ago. When he brought her into his fold and held her there with pretty words and a hand to hold. "I want you to come home with me."

Claude tucked the golden handle into her small, soft hands which were folded so carefully over the planes of her stomach. The sword lay in the curve of her lap like she was a painting of the Goddess in slumber. 

"I want…" he sighed. He pulled at the leather glove from his finger, the tender hide lining running over his coarse hands, torn apart by battle and bow. He brought his ungloved hand up to hers. There they rested, both her hands fit snugly into his. "I want you. Wake up, star light. Come home."

"Pardon the interruption," the voice rang stark through the quiet room. "This is a touching display."

He did not have to turn to know the voice.

"Edelgard," he smiled, diplomacy coming on like a mask even now. His eyes stayed on Byleth even as he heard the click of her boots at the entry. "It's been a long time now."

"I suppose you know why I'm here," she said. 

His fingers trailed from Byleth, down the blade of the sword, skeletal beneath his touch. "I do."

"And I presume you know well enough that I would not have come here without troops to secure the village," she went on. 

Now he turned, looking over his shoulder. She was in full war garb: the red military uniform of the emperor wrapped about her, her relic clutched at her side. "I do."

"I must admit, I feel a little moved by this scene," she told him. She sounded, briefly, like she had when they were students. He had seen her be warm to the touch then. He'd watched use a light hand with those she deemed sympathetic. And the sound of pity sang through her even now. It was reassuring to know she had retained at least that much. "Only a little."

"I am surrounded then?" He asked. 

Edelgard smiled. "Yes. But things need not end in violence."

He felt the threat in his mouth, wanted to chew on it, swallow it whole. But that was his last bid. Not yet, he told himself. 

“How might they end if not in violence?” Claude asked. 

“Give me the Sword of the Creator,” Edelgard said, chin pointing sharp towards the relic a top Byleth’s body. “In turn I will grant you and the Professor safe passage out of Fodlan. You may await her recovery in peace far away from the war.”

“You knew Byleth,” Claude laughed. “You may have even cared for her.”

“I did,” the answer came too soft for Claude to feel compelled to argue.

“Then you know she would never forgive me if she woke to find I had surrendered her sword,” he smiled down at Byleth - mute and unknowing of the danger around her. His fingers lifted up to wipe a strand of hair from her forehead. “Or if I abandoned the people she loved so much in Leicester.”

Edelgard nodded. “I thought you might say so.”

It took only a wave of her hand before imperial guards flooded the cabin. Two stood at Claude's flank, hands on their swords, ready were he to fight them. 

"May I say my goodbyes?" Claude asked. 

Edelgard did not hesitate to give a regal smile of assent. 

Slow and steady - aware of the guards standing above him on either side and the many more watching his back as he moved - he rose to sit on the edge of Byleth's bed. The flowers felt plush beneath him. 

He followed the line of her jaw with his bare hand. Then he caressed the path of her neck. It felt smooth, open and tender.

His way was clear. 

He leaned over Byleth and made a silent plea, pressing his lips to hers. Hand still on her neck he angled her closer to him, tongue pressing between her lifeless lips to let him pass. 

He had to repress the urge to shudder. 

"That's enough," there was a dangerous edge to the Emperor's words. 

Claude pulled back. Her mouth was still slightly ajar and he could see the herbal capsule he passed her sitting useless at the back of her mouth. He ran his fingers down the length of her throat just once more, like he was savouring the image of her, like he’d rehearsed. The involuntary motion of a gulp ran through her and he felt the capsule move down beneath his touch. 

The soldier’s at his side grabbed him by his arms and threw him to the ground before the Emperor’s feet. 

“I thought better than you to violate a corpse,” she hissed. 

The contempt in her words might just be the only sentiment of hers he’d give way to during this war. 

“She isn’t a corpse yet,” He said. “And I believe she’ll forgive me this transgression.”

If it works.

“Take him away,” she nearly spits. 

Claude is yanked to his feet and he pulls, stumbling and dragged by his heel. It shouldn’t be too much longer; he need only stall.

“Admit it,” he calls over his shoulder to Edelgard. The woman turns and the soldiers stop him at the doorway, seeing their master ready to listen. “It’s not the Sword of Creator you came here to get.”

Red erupted from her neck, the colour expanding up the expanses of her face blotchy and angry. Just as she makes a move forward and Claude thinks she might strike him light erupts from the sword’s resting place. 

Edelgard and the guard, unsuspecting, shield their eyes and it is enough time for Claude to scramble away and run to Byleth’s side. He pulls his sword out from beneath his cape, putting steel and flesh in the way of Edelgard’s next move. 

Behind him she wakes. 

Even three years of nothingness cannot dull her instinct, it would seem. He feels the bone sword press into his spine at the tip. Edelgard and her guards stand in for a second but it will not last. 

“I’m not the threat here, Teach,” he shoots her a smile over his shoulder. “Now are you going to help me take these guys on or do I have to do everything myself?”

The smile on her face told him all he needed to know. The world would be theirs before too long.

**Author's Note:**

> Will Claude get his ass kicked for that dirty trick? Will I ever write anything longer than a short? 
> 
> Idk! Maybe!


End file.
